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Where I ask: "Why is the Notre Dame protest different?"
by
noble experiment
Community
(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Tuesday, May. 23, 2017
Tuesday, May. 23, 2017
at
11:11:08am PDT
Many of my friends, even some progressive ones, have been saying things about how inappropriate the Notre Dame protest was. The most common refrain I hear is that it was 1) disrespectful to the VP and 2) unfair to the other students who just wanted to enjoy their graduation day. And then of course it is followed by “and graduation is such an important day…” After trying the “protests are meant to be inconvenient” and “it’s their graduation, too, why should they have to listen to someone who is actively working to oppress them and limit their future” and having very little impact on their viewpoint, I tried the following argument. We’ll see how it goes…
When Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus, she disrespected the bus driver and inconvenienced the other (innocent) passengers who were made late. They had to wait for the police to come and arrest her.
When the lunch counter sit-ins happened they disrespected the store and badly interfered with their sales. Other diners were definitely inconvenienced.
When MLK marched in Birmingham, he defied the governor and directly disrespected and defied Bull Connor and the Birmingham police. Needless to say, many people were inconvenienced.
And yet, we don't have objections to these protests. These protests are unquestioned in their validity. It should also be noted that one of the prevailing white attitudes at the time was "Blacks deserve civil rights, but they need to go slow. They need to end these protests and work the system." This was from whites sympathetic to the cause (but not wanting trouble). MLK excoriated these people as in some ways worse than his direct oppressors.
So that brings me to the Notre Dame protest. What is different about this protest? Is the graduation different than the lunch counter? Is the disrespect different because it is the VP instead of the bus driver/police officer? If so, where is the line? Governor and above? Mayor?
I would submit the difference is none of these things. I suggest the difference is we don't see the cause of LGBT rights and women's rights in the same light as we do Civil Rights. If we don't consider these struggles for justice different, then why do we respond to the protests differently? And if we do consider them as different, why do we see them as different?